


The Voice of the Turtle is Heard in Our Land

by Mercredi (FabulaRasa)



Category: Original - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-18
Updated: 2011-08-18
Packaged: 2017-10-22 19:11:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/241547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulaRasa/pseuds/Mercredi





	The Voice of the Turtle is Heard in Our Land

There was so little to run away from that, in the end, it only took a week to plan.

“Mary.”

She had mumbled and rolled over, tugging the blanket higher, willing the voice away.

“Mary, G.D. Christ, wake up. It’s me.” Her sister’s voice was hoarse. “You are so G.D. lazy, I swear. Now hush and don’t say a word, just listen. You and me are gonna leave here. We’re gonna leave soon as I can get a couple nickels. We’re gonna leave and not come back, you hear me? Mary, you awake? You listening?”

And she had been awake, all right, from the minute the urgency in her sister’s voice had penetrated her thick soupy sleep. She slept so hard these days, harder than she ever had, and that was saying something. Of all of them, she had always been the soundest sleeper, the last to get out of bed in the mornings. Land sakes, Mary, you got molasses in your shoes? their mother would ask when she stumbled out in the pre-dawn dark, stupid with exhaustion, her eyes puffy and swollen, her feet already aching. She took to sleeping in her shoes to save the time, so she wouldn’t catch it from Papa if she was late.

And she found nothing to say to Emma, no questions, least of all why. The why was obvious. It was a question of which “why” Emma might have chosen, which one had finally driven her to it. The only questions that made any sense to ask were: why now, and why me. She figured the why now part could stand explaining later, and the why me part shouldn’t be asked lest Emma change her mind and leave her after all.

“Move your skinny hide. I’m crawling in with you.”

Normally Emma slept with Ellen or Virgie. But Ellen was gone now, been gone for a month and more with Walter. Not gone off like Myrtle Stocks down the road, who up and left one afternoon with Gordon from the feed store and nobody had seen or heard from them since. That Myrtle was trashy, and she would come to no good end, is what their mother said. No, Ellen had been married proper, the way it should be. No courthouse for Walter – he had insisted on a church, so they had had to drive up to Witcum and roust out a preacher. Walter had a car, a green one. He had even had a tiny gold band for her finger, and his fattish face had been shiny with pride when they drove back and he introduced her as “my wife.” Ellen had been fiery with happiness, and in her glow she had given her extra set of shoes to Mary.  
“I won’t need them anyway,” she had said. “They’re just working shoes.” Ellen’s feet had always been delicate, like a china doll’s, as delicate and pretty as Ellen herself. Mary, taller than Ellen by half a head though four years her junior, had had to cram her feet into them.

In the dark, Emma’s conspiratorial whisper thrummed in her ear. She tried to stay awake, but she was so tired, and Emma was so warm. The last thing she remembered was her head on Emma’s shoulder, and an absent stroking of the braid coiled on top of her head.

“When we get to Arizona, I’m going to bob mine like the picture magazines,” came Emma’s soft voice at her ear.

“Mm,” she replied, and she was asleep.

* * *

It only took a week, from Emma shaking her awake in the dawn dark.

It might have been a dream, is what she thought the next morning. Or one of those things you talk about in the night. Emma didn’t mention it again, not once all that week, and she didn’t bring it up. She stumbled out every morning, her feet stuffed into her too-small shoes, her meager breakfast stuffed into her still-hungry mouth, and headed for the timber lot with Emma and Virgie. It was a good job, at good pay, or would have been if they had been allowed to keep any of it. There were three of them on a team – two to wield the saw, and one to do the undercutting. They took turns at the saw, since Mary was as strong as the older ones. They weren’t the only girls doing tree-cutting, not by a far sight, but the other ones didn’t talk to them. Some of the other ones were married, and their husbands hired them out in the winter when there were no crops to follow, and when the timber companies were the best bet for a steady job.

One morning a week after the talk that Mary was beginning to think had been a dream, Ralph came and watched them. Ralph was the foreman of their group. Not the head foreman, because the head foreman sat in the office on the lot and kept his boots warm at the coal grate, but one of the under-foremen responsible for watching over the teams as they worked. In theory, he was supposed to spend an equal amount of time supervising each group, offering comment or advice or sometimes a helping hand with the undercut, and making sure they were all working steady. But in practice, he spent most of his time watching them, leaning against a tree and talking in that flat twangy way of his that showed he had never traveled further than ten miles from western Oklahoma. Mary’s voice didn’t sound like that, and she hated the sound of it. She had traveled a lot – all the way to California and back, for the pea picking every year, through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, then back again to Oklahoma. Ralph had never even seen Tulsa. He smelled bad, and he spat tobacco juice, but this morning he didn’t have any. This morning he just watched.

“Not deep enough,” was all he said when it was her turn for the undercut.

“Ah, shut up, Ralph,” Emma said.

“Girl, you got a smart mouth. You better watch that smart mouth. Here, lemme show you,” he said, and he stepped up behind Mary, his hands on the axe, encircling her. “Like this, see.”

“She knows, Ralph.” Emma’s voice was hard.

“She knows so good, she better do it then. You gotta angle it more,” he said, swinging the axe, guiding her from behind. His overalls were rough against her thin dress, and the warmth of his body made her shiver. She could stand the cold just fine, except when she came up against warmth. “Girl, ain’t you got you a coat?” He took one hand off the axe and rubbed her arm with it.

“Ralph.” Emma’s voice was sharper. “You let go a her.”

He stepped back then and resumed his watching. Mary tried to ignore him, like Virgie did. Virgie never did say much, and she had a way of looking through you like you weren’t even there, with a kind of glassy indifference that Mary tried to imitate whenever she got a turn in the mirror. Virgie kept her back to him, plying the saw, and once, when Ralph got too close, she contrived to fart as she bent over. Emma laughed out loud.

“You’re disgusting,” he said, working his lips like he might have had tobacco in them. “Filthy sluts.”

He stomped off after that and didn’t come back until after lunch. Lunch was the part of the day that Mary liked least – the cold didn’t matter as long as you kept moving, but you had to sit on your haunches for lunch, and the cold always seeped into her then. They unwrapped their sacks of unbuttered bread and chewed intently. There was coffee in the little frame office down on the lot, and all the teams were allowed to go get some during lunch, but by the time you hiked around the ridge and back again, that was half your lunch time gone right there. Besides, Ralph was always there.

“Ah, hell with it,” Emma said with relish. “I’m gonna go get us some coffee.” Mary’s eyes went wide at Emma’s language, but Virgie just shrugged. “Don’t take too long,” she said.

They didn’t have a watch, but they knew it was close on an hour before Emma got back. Mary and Virgie had long since resumed working on the near stand of trees, not so much because they could get much done without a third, but because it was better to be moving. Virgie was getting angry, she could tell – her fine butterfly-feeler brows were drawing together, and her mouth was setting. “That Emma,” was all she said.

When Emma finally stomped back, Virgie straightened and gave her a look.

“Been keeping warm?” she asked.

“Oh, go suck on a lemon. Here.” She thrust a mug of coffee at her, and handed one to Mary, who wrapped grateful hands around it.

“Where’s yours?”

“Drank it.”

Virgie spat hers out. “It’s cold. You couldn’t a brought us hot?”

“It ain’t cold, just not as hot as it might be. I had to walk, if you ain’t noticed.” She was flushed and breathing hard, and her dress was twisted at the waist.

“You fall down or something?” Virgie asked.

“Shut up,” she said, and they set back to work in silence for the rest of the day. They put their coins in the jar when they got home. Mama was bathing Jimmy in the sink, and gave each of them an absent smile as they kissed her hello. Jimmy was setting up a squall. “I hit my head,” he sniffled. “I hit it.”

It gave Mary the headache, being around him. “Hush up,” she hissed when Mama went to get more hot water from the stove. “We been working hard. You’ll give Virgie the sick headache,” she said, pinching him. She retreated from his renewed squalling and lay on the bed up in the loft, closing her eyes.

“Mama better not catch you up here.” Emma grinned down at her. She shoved a bowl of beans in her lap. “Shuck these, lazybones, and try not to make a mess. And look.” She reached a hand into her shirt and came out with five nickels, spreading each on the quilt, gray and shiny and warm from her skin. “Twenty-five cents. That’s a whole quarter. We can go now.”

She stared at her. “Where’d you get twenty-five cents? Emma, you ain’t stole that from the jar?”

“I ain’t stole it.” Her face was hard. “It’s mine all right.”

* * *

Emma woke her that night, her hand rough and insistent. She didn’t protest as Emma pulled her from the bed, her sleep-fuzzed brain thinking it was time to get up already, and she was late. It wasn’t until Emma pushed her out the back door and into the moonlight, and she realized there was no breakfast, no clamor of dawn in the dusty yard, that she stopped.

“Emma. What’s going on? Is the house afire?” Once, there had been a fire. It was the year Papa had said they could have a Christmas tree, and Jack and Bill had stuck so many candles on it the thing had gone up like a bonfire. No one had even shrieked – they had all been too stunned. Papa was the only one with the presence of mind to leap up and drag the tree right out the door, it blazing away all the time. The hair on his arms had been black and curled from it, and when he had walked back through the door and seen them all standing gaping like fish he had laughed fit to beat the band.

“Nothing’s on fire, you goose. We’re leaving.”

“Leaving?” She stood in the yard, gaping in just the same way, trying to blink back the edges of sleep. “What time is it?”

“Don’t know. Close on midnight, I guess. Hurry, we’ve got to make it to the Wallises before sun-up.”

She stumbled through the rickety gate in Emma’s wake. Jack’s dog looked up and gave a thump of its tail before turning over and re-settling in the chill dust. Not until they were on the side of the road and headed west did she think to look back.

“Wait up.”

“For what?”

“I got to—I have to pee.”

Emma sighed and set the suitcase down. “Do it then. Come on, quick.”

“I have to—I need to go into the bushes.”

“Oh for Pete’s sake. You want us to get caught? You better pee like nobody’s business, then. Go on, you old slowpoke.” Emma perched on the suitcase while Mary took off for the clump of straggly bushes just behind them, and pulled her drawers down. She could just see the house from here, through the brambles. It was still and dark – no lights, no hullabaloo, no crying. A chicken flapped in the distant coop. A snake was getting in, Ruby said. It was making them nervous and flighty and making the eggs thin. Della said that was nonsense, that snakes ate up chickens but had nothing to do with what the eggs looked like when they came out. Ruby said it was a known fact that a nervous chicken laid a thin egg.

“Mary.”

“I’m coming.” She waggled a bit to dry off and pulled her clothes up, trotting out. “Ready. Where we going again?”

Emma picked up the suitcase. “The Wallises. You remember them?”

“Think so.”

She had to jog, almost, to keep up with Emma’s brisk pace, though her legs were as long. It made conversation difficult, and something about the set of Emma’s head didn’t invite questions.

“What we gonna do at the Wallises?”

“Sleep, goose. And eat, maybe.”

“They gonna give us some food?”

“Don’t know. Maybe so, can they spare any.”

“Well, you got that money. May be we can buy us some food.”

Emma shook her head and picked up her pace. After a bit Mary reached down for the suitcase. “I’ll take a turn with it.” And as she took it, surprised by its weight: “What you pack in here anyway?”

“Change a clothes for both of us. A blanket. Some shoes. Don’t know whose – it was too dark to see. I couldn’t fool around much, on account of Jack’s such a light sleeper and he was shifting around. He might a woke up.”

“Would he of called Papa, do you think?”

Emma shrugged. “Who knows. But it ain’t nobody else’s business. Hush talking now.”

They trudged on in silence in the full moon dark, the road a bright crunching ribbon. The undergrowth on either side of the road was getting thicker, looming higher, and Mary kept her steps close to her sister’s. For a long time there was no noise but the grind of their shoes on the road and the huff of their breath. Of a sudden Emma stopped, throwing her arm out and halting Mary.

“What?” she hissed.

“Be still.”

For the space of three breaths Emma stayed frozen. Then she relaxed. “Okay. Let’s go. I’m just nervous, I guess.”

“What? You hear something?”

“Nah. It was nothing.” They went on, but Emma’s pace was even brisker now, her step surer.

“Emma.”

“What.”

“I hear something.”

“I know. Keep moving.”

Her heart began a trip hammer motion, and her hand on the suitcase shook. There it was again – a definite rustle, a shuffle, a step. Something in the undergrowth. Following them. Emma threw her arm out again and they both froze, ears straining for a sound. Nothing.

“It stops when we do,” she whispered to Emma. “What we gonna do?”

Emma’s lips were a line as she chewed them. “Shut up. Just keep moving. Stay with me, no matter what. Anybody comes, you set up a squall.”

They set off down the road at a near trot, long legs swinging, but the noise kept pace with them. There was no motion in the bushes that they could see, but then, it was powerfully dark. Mary’s mind raced, turning over the possibilities. It couldn’t be Papa. It couldn’t be. He would have snatched them both by the collars by now, dragging them back to the house for the hiding of their lives. One of the boys would have jumped out at them long ago. It was somebody following them, somebody who was waiting. Somebody who had been sleeping in the bushes by the road like so many did these days, waiting to hitch to California or Arizona or Washington, dusty dirty toothless men with pinched bellies and mean-looking eyes. There was no room in her chest for breath, and she didn’t know if it was fear or exhaustion or both.

“Emma,” she whispered. “Emma, we got to go back.”

“No. You shut up.” They went even faster, by unspoken common consent not running, knowing that would be the signal for disaster. And when Mary knew she couldn’t go another step, knew her legs would start to shake and buckle under her, Emma stopped. The only sound on the road was their heavy, labored breath.

“Why don’t he jump at us?” Mary whispered. “Why don’t he just do it?”

Emma’s eyes were narrowed. “Because it ain’t a he, is what.”

Cold clutched Mary’s chest. Wolves. They were being stalked. They were being hunted. “Listen,” she said, her throat almost closed from fear. “We got to get into a tree, or something. We can wait up in a tree till morning. We’ll be safe there. We’ll find us a tree.”

Emma turned from staring off into the brush and frowned at her. “You lost your mind, Mary? You got a hole in your head? Where you see a tree anywhere around here? You think they’s a tree anywhere within five miles a here the timber company ain’t cut yet? Tree,” she said, shaking her head. “Girl, you are some kind a dumb.”

Tears stung her eyes, not from Emma’s words, which were delivered absently and without sting, but from fear. She felt the backing of bile in her throat and knew beyond a doubt that she would throw up. “We got to keep moving,” she almost sobbed. “We got to run.”

“No.” Emma shook her head. “Set that suitcase down.” Mary obeyed. “Don’t move. You hear me? You don’t move.”

Emma slowly stepped toward the brush, one foot in front of the other, her back straight.

“Emma! Emma, Jesus name, what are you doing?”

No answer, and Emma was moving off the road now to stand ramrod-straight in the brush. The bushes began to move and part, and now for the first time she could hear the rustling sound clear. She opened her mouth to scream but it was dry with cold, and she was helpless as the thing advanced on Emma. A distorted swollen-eyed face stuck its long neck through the brambles, and Emma laughed softly.

“Mary, you big old goose. Come over here.”

“It’s a deer,” she said wonderingly. “Oh! I know that deer! Emma, that’s Voyd Nelson’s deer! That’s—” she cast about for the creature’s name without success. “It’s Voyd’s pet, it must be. She’s got the same funny mark on her head.” Tentatively she reached a hand toward the wide pointed head, and a cold wet nose shoved itself into her hand, rooting hopefully. Mary caught her breath. “Will you look at that. Oh, Emma, her lips feel so soft.” A smile cracked her face, and she used her other hand to gently stroke the cropped fur of her neck. “She’s beautiful.”

Emma wrinkled her nose. “She’s got fleas, I’ll lay. You should stop petting on her.”

“Naw, she ain’t got fleas. I seen Voyd washing her himself. He hadn’t ought to let her wander around, though, specially at night. Anything could happen to her. We coulda been mean folks, or something. And there’s coyotes, too.” Ki-yotes, she said.

“Yeah. Whatever. Come on, let’s get going.” They started back down the road, the deer clip-clopping behind them now, glad of the company.

* * *

The walk took all of the night that was left to them, and they knew with the sure instinct of those who have risen before dawn their whole lives that there was no more than an hour of dark left when they pushed back the gate of the Wallises’ and tapped on the back door. They had passed other houses on the road – two others, but they were newer neighbors they didn’t know, and they wouldn’t have opened their doors for two lone skinny girls with a battered suitcase and hopeful looks, in any case.

And then there was the possibility of Papa looking for them, and without a car it would take him the better part of a day to walk all the way to the Wallises, even if he suspected that was where they were. The Wallises were church-going folk, too, more regular than their folks, and Leon Wallis always used to quote the Scriptures, when he had lived next door to them. Of course, that could go against them, too – Emma’s grasp of the Commandments was sturdy enough to know there was something in them about returning property to its lawful owner, as well as honoring your folks, but there were plenty of other parts about charity and doing unto others. With any luck he would think of them as the others, and not their Papa. So Emma had decided for the Wallises a week ago, or a year ago, or whenever it was that she had first thought of getting out, getting anywhere, and her rap on the door was sharp and decisive. She had no worry of waking anyone, not here at almost dawn, and the door opened quickly. It wasn’t like the house – any of these houses – were big enough for it to take long to get to the door.

“Yeah,” Leon Wallis said, his frame blocking the door.

“It’s me, Emma Lindsey, Mr. Wallis. Me and my sister Mary. We was wondering could we have a bite to eat and a place to sleep a bit before we head out. We’re headed west. To see our sister Ellen. Could we come in please?”

He didn’t shift from the doorway, but took in their tired hungry faces, the single suitcase, and their dusty feet in one glance. “Your Daddy know where you are?”

Emma’s jaw tightened. “We’re just asking for a bite and a few feet of floor. We’ll be on our way before the day’s out, I swear.”

“Leon? Who’s that at the door?”

“It’s Will’s girls. They’re wanting food and a bed.”

A plump woman with a baby on her hip shouldered him aside. Mary caught the baby’s eye and tried a shy smile. It gave a toothless grin at her and ducked its head into Mrs. Wallis’s chest. “You girls go on home. You hadn’t ought to be running away like this, worrying your Mama clean to death. You go on home now.”

“Ma’am, please ma’am. Me and my sister, we’ve been walking all night just to get here. We ain’t running away – we’re going to see our sister Ellen in Arizona. She got married. Her husband works at a dude ranch. He wrote to say we could have jobs could we get out there. We want to make money and send some back home. We ain’t running away.”

The baby blinked happily at Mary from under its plump arm. Mrs. Wallis shifted it to her other side. “Child, we ain’t got enough to share, and that’s the truth, and we ain’t about to set any neighbor against us by stealing his family away. That ain’t right. You go on home now.” A pinched looking little girl not much younger than Della peeked from behind Mrs. Wallis’s skirts and blinked at them. Mary tried a weak smile, but the grave little face was unmoved. “You all get on now.”

They stumbled wordlessly out of the yard and sat on the roadside around the bend, silently agreeing that the Wallises should not witness their defeat. The deer nipped at the brown grass behind them, taking it philosophically. “I’m mighty hungry,” Mary said quietly, into her skirt. It would almost be breakfast time back at the house. Mama would start the biscuit soon, stretching the flour out so none of it would go to waste. Della and Ruby would be going to feed the chickens, and Jack’s dog would scratch at the back door. She thought of his floppy ears and how soft they felt under her fingers, and the sound of the pump handle, and the bang of the door, and Jimmy’s gurgle, and she felt a sharp pain that wasn’t all from hunger.

“Let’s go home, Emma.”

“No.”

“Emma, please. I’m so hungry I might fall over. Please, I just want to go home.”

Emma turned to look at her then, and Mary dropped her eyes at the fierceness of the gaze. “How old are you, Mary?”

“I—you know how old I am. I was thirteen just three weeks ago.”

“Thirteen. How many years you been in school?”

“I—”

“None, that’s what. You been in school maybe six months, maybe less when you add it all up. You been working – we both been working since we was old enough to tote and carry. You ever see any of that money we been working for? You ever get so much as a birthday present? Huh.”

“I don’t need no birthday present.”

“You say you don’t need no birthday present, and maybe that’s true. But you do need a education, you need to know how to read and write and do sums. That’s what you need.”

“I know all that already,” she said softly.

“I know it. I know you do. You’re smart, Mary. Don’t you know that? You’re the smartest one. Why, you hear a poem or a song just once, and you’re saying it like you read it out of a book, just that perfect. You’re smarter than all of ‘em put together, you are. Smarter ‘n me, even. You don’t belong back there. And maybe I do,” she said defiantly. “Maybe I do, and that kind of life’s all I’m good for. But I don’t want it, and I ain’t a-going to take it. I’m gonna see can I get myself something else.”

“You mean like Ellen?”

“Huh. That Ellen. I’m gonna do better than that fat Walter, is what. That Ellen is too stupid to see that he’s about as worthless as that old car. I’ll get me better’n Walter, that’s for sure. But you,” she said, grabbing Mary’s shoulder. “You don’t even need to think about getting a man. They’ll crawl on their bellies for you, as smart and as good-looking and all sweet as you are. I ain’t a-going to watch—” she broke off and fiddled with a piece of rock near her shoe. “I ain’t going to deliver no more of Mama’s babies, that’s for sure,” she ended lamely.

“Well, she can’t help it when they come so fast. Some women’s time, it just goes fast like that. I reckon it’s because she had so many.”

Emma’s eyes on her were remote. “I meant, she ain’t going to have no more. Her insides is all took sick, since Eugene.” They sat silent at the name of their youngest brother, the only vanished one of them. “Papa won’t come at her no more,” Emma said at last.

“Oh. Okay.”

Emma’s eyes were fierce on her again. “Mary. You know what I’m talking about?”

“You’re talking about Papa and Mama.”

“I’m talking about Papa and Mama, and I’m not talking about Papa and Mama. I’m talking about you and me and every other girl in that house, you hear me? Ellen’s got out of it, and Virgie’s big enough to fend for herself. Ruby and Della and Alice, they’re too little. But you and me—” she chucked the rock across the road. “Hell. We got to get in that house.”

“But you just said we can’t go back.”

“Not our house, goose. The Wallises. We got to get them to let us in. I ain’t walked all night to perish of hunger here on the road. Open up that suitcase.”

“I thought you said ain’t no food in it.”

“No more there is.” She rummaged and pulled out a shoe. “Here.”

“I ain’t eating shoe leather.”

“Nobody asking you to. Mary. You’re gonna whack that deer.”

“I’m gonna what?”

“You’re gonna whack him. He won’t let me get close enough, and he likes you fine. Mary, listen to me. You got to whack him. We show up on the Wallises porch with a whole venison, they’re bound to let us in. They’re hungry, is all. And we got food. We got enough food right here for a week. Go on, now.”

Mary stared at the shoe in horror. “You’re crazy.”

“Go on and whack him.”

“It’s not a him. It’s a doe.”

“I don’t care if it’s the Queen of Siam, you’re gonna whack it. Just go on up to it like you got something in your hand, see, and then bring down that heel right across its head.”

“I don’t – what you expect me to do, beat it to death with a shoe?”

“No.” Emma reached into the suitcase again and pulled out a long and wicked knife. “I’ll do that part. But you got to whack it for me first.” And then, in a voice that tried to be calm and reasonable: “He don’t like me much. But you been petting on him all might. He’ll let you do it.”

She flung the shoe from her. “I ain’t doing that! You’re crazy! I ain’t going to whack somebody’s pet, that never done us any harm! I ain’t going to do that kind of meanness.”

Emma was looking at the knife in her lap, not angry. She didn’t speak for a while, and Mary was hopeful she had got over her fit. “I ain’t going back there,” was all she said. “Please, Mary, don’t make me go back there.” She didn’t raise her head.

The sky was graying above the brush now, and little sounds of life were starting up all around them. They would hear the Wallises’ door bang any minute now. Mary studied the shoe, then got up. The deer was some thirty feet away from them, worrying the dry fuzz that used to be grass. It raised its head at her approach and went back to grazing, flicking its flag tail distractedly. She stroked along its fat sleek side as it ate, paying no more attention to her than a cow might. She wondered what Voyd fed it, that it plumped up so well, and she remembered the day Voyd had shown it to her, the day Papa and Voyd’s daddy had built the shed in the Nelsons’ yard, and she had been jerked out of bed and told to come along and help, look smart now, and how she had protested – in her head, of course. No verbal protest would have been allowed, nor would she have contemplated it.

“Shhh,” Voyd had whispered, grabbing her arm hard from around the corner of the house. “I got something to show you.” And he had led her into the barn that smelled of warm cow and earth. The Nelsons did all right for themselves. It was a real barn, not a patched-together lean-to. And inside, curled up on the sweet hay, was a young doe, her spots just faded. “Ain’t she pretty?” Voyd had murmured. “Ain’t she just the prettiest thing? Go on, you can pet her. She’ll know it’s all right, since I’m here. I’ve trained her. Ain’t she pretty?”

She had a flash of thought that they could go back the other direction on the road and try to get to the Nelsons. Voyd’s daddy seemed nice enough, and Voyd was always friendly to them when they met in town. He always waved and grinned. They could show up with the deer, alive and safe, and he would be so grateful he’d make his daddy let them stay there. Maybe they could even live there, and they could get their own jobs, maybe not even at the timber company, and maybe they could keep their money – pay some room and board to the Nelsons, of course, and still have some left over. It sounded hopeless, pathetic even, as she said it in her head. The deer blinked at her and politely nudged a tuft of weed by her foot.

“Mary,” Emma called.

The deer raised its head at the voice and quick as a rattlesnake Mary brought the heavy work heel down on its skull. It blinked at her again and resumed its grazing, obviously willing to let bygones be bygones.

“I whacked it,” she said. “I whacked it and it ain’t falling over.”

Emma poked her head through the bush and the deer shifted away from her with the domesticated animal’s sure instinct for the indifferent human.

“Whack it again.”

“I—I can’t.”

“God-damn it, Mary, you whack that effing animal right now. Unless you want me to hand you the knife and you be the one that does that part?”

She closed her eyes tight and gripped the shoe harder. Her fingers were cold and slippery. This time she rested a hand on the back of its neck, and brought the shoe down with all the force in her. The doe staggered backwards a bit, but she had hold of its neck. She struck again, before the doe could wrench free, and again. She shut her eyes and pounded, hearing the crack of heel on skull. Once, twice, thrice, and then she lost count, then Emma was holding her arm.

“Jesus, I said whack it, not mash it.” She opened her eyes and saw the thing, a crumpled tawny heap at her feet, its sleek belly stilled.

“Did I—is it dead?”

“I don’t know. Nah, I doubt it. We don’t want it waking up on us when we’re trying to carry it. Here, drop that shoe and grab ahold of its neck.”

There was blood on the shoe and blood on the doe’s half-open eyelid. She knelt and tried to touch the head to keep it steady. “I can’t. I can’t touch it.”

“Oh, for the love of—” Emma sighed and, kneeling beside the animal, laid its throat open in one sure deep stroke. The blood fountained out onto the dry ground, soaking the dust and the grass and Emma’s knees. The deer gave two convulsive kicks of its back legs and was still.

“All right. I did it. Mary, get over here and help me drag this thing up to the Wallises. Wipe your mouth.”

The vomit trickled out of the corner of her mouth. “I didn’t even know I was throwing up.”

“Well, stop it. You’re gonna make me sick too. Come on, let’s go.”

“Wait.” Mary got unevenly to her feet. “We need to say a word.”

“What word?”

“I mean, we need to say a word over the—over her body.” Emma’s mouth was already open, but she plowed on. “No, I’m not gonna do it unless we say a word right here. You want me to help tote it, you’re gonna stand there a minute and pay some respect.”

“I wasn’t gonna say no. What do you want to say?”

She looked at the sorry mangled thing at their feet, and the widening puddle of blood and muck beneath it. Its eyes were still half-open. She tried to think about church, about the three or four Sundays a year they made it into town on a Sunday for church-going, about the Bible on the shelf above Mama’s bed. The only funeral she had ever seen was on the road to California, and it had been a Catholic one. Some field worker, she supposed. They had stopped to pee, and there had been this little cemetery up on a rise above the road, and she had wandered up there and seen a man in a dress and some other people holding their hats. Mexicans, all of them, though she couldn’t see the face of the man in the dress. But he hadn’t been talking English, so she supposed he was foreign too. His dress had flapped in the breeze and ruffled the pages of his little book, but Emma had tugged on her hand and led her away before she could see any more. She wished she could have known some of the words. That was back when they had the car.

“Dear Lord,” she began in a solemn hieratic voice, and licked her lips. “Like as the hart. Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks.” Emma had bowed her head. “Thou leadest me beside the still waters, for His name’s sake. Surely goodness and mercy have kissed one another. Whoever givest a cup of cold water in My name, Amen.”

“Amen.”

They stood, heads bowed, in silence for another moment. Mary inched her shoes away from the spreading puddle. She bent to close its eyes. “Okay,” she said finally, realizing Emma was waiting for the signal. “Let’s tote her now.”

Emma went to the suitcase and came back with a thick blanket. “What else you got in there?” Mary asked. “Shoes, a kitchen knife, and a blanket is what you brought us, but no food?”

Emma shrugged apologetically. “I got some underwear, too.”

“Well maybe we can put that on its head.”

Emma gave a little laugh. “I ain’t about to have Leon Wallis looking at my pants, I can tell you that.”

Mary grinned, too, imagining her dingy panties wrapped around the deer’s head, its eyeballs staring out sightlessly through the leg-holes. Together they hauled the thing up through the brush along the side of the road and back to the Wallises’ yard. They paused to consider the trail of blood, which was seeping through the thin blanket.

“Well, there’s no help for it,” Emma said. “It’ll wash away. I hate like fire to stain their yard, but there’s no help for it.” She knocked on the door, louder this time, and it was Mrs. Wallis who answered this time.

“I thought I told you girls to get on home.”

“Yes ma’am. Only we can’t do that, ma’am, so we brought you something we thought might change your mind.” Emma stepped aside to reveal the fat freshly slaughtered deer, and Mrs. Wallis’s eyes widened. “It’s a little something for you and your family. My mama taught me how to cook up a right nice venison stew, and I can dress this thing myself, if need be you don’t want to lay yourself out. It can be right warm work, dressing a deer.” She wiped the back of her hand across her forehead to push the straggling hair away and left a broad streak of blood. Mary felt another giggle coming on.

“You all better get in this house then,” Mrs. Wallis said. “You just leave that creature where it is. Wallis’ll see to it.” She considered them. “I reckon you’d like to have a bath.”

* * *

They sat sodden with exhaustion in the tepid water, too tired to talk or exult, and fell into the bed together to wake washed and rested when the sun was going down again. There was roast venison and venison stew, and warm soft bread, and the little baby sat in Mary’s lap while Emma helped with the laying-on. They bowed their heads hastily as Mr. Wallis started the blessing, setting down their forks surreptitiously.

“Dear Lord,” he intoned, and Mary kept her eyes on the steaming brown haunch. “We thank You that You have provided such bounty for your servants out of the wealth of Your natural creation. Now bless this food to our use, and us to Thy service, Amen.”

“Amen,” the little girl between Mary and Emma lisped. “Amen,” they all echoed, but when the plates were being passed round, Mary took another helping of bread and ladled out extra potatoes to avoid the meat, which had been overcooked to blackened nuggets. She buried the chunks discreetly under a mound of potatoes, but Mrs. Wallis’s eyes were sharp on her.

“For the life of all flesh is the blood thereof,” she said.

Mary glanced at Emma. “Yes, ma’am,” she said.

“That’s in the Bible. May be that meat is more done than you might be used to at your house,” she explained, with just the smallest emphasis on your. “We don’t eat the blood in this house. Whosoever eateth it shall be cut off.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she said again.

In bed they whispered together after Wallis’s soft snores had started up, and after the baby’s snuffles had settled to a quiet whimper. “I’m going to bob my hair, too,” Mary said, her breath warm in Emma’s ear.

“No you ain’t. You’re too young. You won’t cut it before you’re sixteen.”

“You ain’t sixteen yet.”

“Reckon I will be by the time we get to Arizona. Don’t cut it, Mary. It’s so pretty. It’s the finest head of hair I ever seen.”

“Not finer than Mama’s.”

Emma didn’t answer, but set to uncoiling and combing out Mary’s braid with her fingers, spreading it on the pillow. “I’ll wash it for you, next couple days,” she said. “Can’t do it tomorrow. We’ve got to get on the road and keep on going.”

“It’s all right. I reckon I’ll be cut off anyway.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve been eating blood my whole life. Reckon my hair’ll have to be cut off, now.”

Emma smacked her playfully and muffled a giggle in the blanket. “That ain’t what needs cutting off. You ask me, she ought to start with Wallis’s thing. They been married what? Three years? And she’s already got two and another on the way.”

“Really?” Mary pushed herself up on her elbows. “How can you tell?”

Emma shrugged in her odd one-shouldered way. “I just can. A woman knows.”

“Oh, you don’t know.”

She burrowed into the clean good-smelling covers, warm to her toes, and wedged her back against Emma, who allowed it. She was just drifting off when she felt Emma start up her stroking again, a gentle rhythmic carding of the thick black mane. Like a horse’s tail, Mama used to say. As if reading her thoughts, she felt the vibration of Emma’s soft throaty lullaby against her neck. Pony boy, pony boy, won’t you be my pony boy. . . .

Dawn found her still asleep, and when she swam to the surface of wakefulness it was not the slant of light through the strange window that confused her, but the startling unaccustomed fact of her bare feet.


End file.
